Haptics is a tactile and force feedback technology that takes advantage of a user's sense of touch by applying haptic feedback effects (i.e., haptic effects), such as forces, vibrations, and motions, to the user. Devices, such as mobile devices, touchscreen devices, and personal computers can be configured to generate haptic effects. In general, original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) of such devices program calls to embedded hardware capable of generating haptic effects (such as actuators) within an operating system (“OS”) of the device. These calls specify which haptic effect to play in response to a specific event. For example, when a user interacts with the device using, for example, a button, touchscreen, lever, joystick, wheel, or some other control, control position information can be sent to the OS of the device, which can then send a play command through control circuitry to the embedded hardware. The embedded hardware then produces the appropriate haptic effect. Because calls to the embedded hardware are generally programmed at the OS level, non-OEM parties can typically only utilize haptic effects that are already defined.